Are there any £1 Direct Debits?

epm-84

binaryuniverse wrote: »

I find the abuse of charities, to satisfy a £1 direct debit requirement, somewhat abhorrent, if I'm being perfectly honest.

Why is it abuse? If you can't afford to give to a charity but would get say £5 extra a month by setting up a DD of £1 a month to a charity why is that a bad thing for either yourself or the charity? If you're an Income Tax Payer the charity will get £15 for every £12 you donate.

eschaton

robatwork wrote: »

I wonder if you have a list of "properly run charities"?

Never had a need to have this list, so no.

xylophone

£1 a month to Red Cross?

https://beta.redcross.org.uk/appeal/general-fund-appeal?spm=Regular%20Giving

This should be more than enough to cover the cost of a mosquito net which is better than nothing......

Ashen

If a company or charity lost money on a £1 DD they wouldn't accept them. The presence of websites that appear to offer and profit from £1 DD's suggest there is a clear income stream from these.

I've gone round in circles before arguing this point with certain people on this thread, and nobody's ever been able to evidence that a longterm £1 DD actually causes a loss - with it being apparent that there is a clear profit from £1 DD's for some of the sites linked in this thread.

I don't use £1 DD's myself, but on the perfectly rational assumption that charities are still making something from a longterm direct debit, I would rather people donate something than nothing.

takman

epm-84 wrote: »

Bank charges for a registered charity to operate direct debits is nothing.

Cost of setting them up will depend whether you do it online, or do it by post or over the phone and whether or not the charity relies on volunteers or paid workers to do their admin work. Either way if a direct debit of £1/month is kept active long term the charity will recover the costs involved in setting it up.

Do you ever think that donating items of low value to a charity shop is pointless because they won't even be able to recover the cost of running the shop from low value donations? If not, why do have a different view to low value direct debits?

The flaw in that logic is that in a shop once the fixed costs of running the shop have been paid the charity won't incurr extra charges for each items they are donated. But when the charity accept payments by direct debit they have to pay a fee to their bank for every payment they receive and not just a fee to set it up.

But personally I doubt this charge would be anywhere near £1 for a £1 DD.

EachPenny

epm-84 wrote: »

Cost of setting them up will depend whether you do it online, or do it by post or over the phone and whether or not the charity relies on volunteers or paid workers to do their admin work. Either way if a direct debit of £1/month is kept active long term the charity will recover the costs involved in setting it up.

The time of volunteers still has a value, even if they aren't getting paid. Does it make sense for volunteer time to be spent administering £1 direct debits, or doing something which better supports the charity's objectives?

Set-up costs may well be recovered if the DD is kept running long-term but let's not kid ourselves that many people looking for £1 DD's are intending to run them for long, or for that matter beyond any switching bonus payment period.

The point is simple. There are other ways of getting the required number of direct debits which don't involve using a charity £1 donation. People who like to believe that a £1 donation will leave the charity with a useful surplus might be right, they might be wrong. We don't know, it is all guesswork. So there is no need, and no point, in taking that risk.

epm-84 wrote: »

Do you ever think that donating items of low value to a charity shop is pointless because they won't even be able to recover the cost of running the shop from low value donations? If not, why do have a different view to low value direct debits?

As takman already suggests, once the fixed costs of running a shop are covered, low-value items that are saleable will still result in the charity benefitting.

A better analogy would be leaving a binbag in the charity shop's doorway full of chipped mismatched plates, broken toys, jigsaws with bits missing, soiled bedding, and shoes with one of the pair missing. Yes, the items may all have some value and may possibly find a customer willing to pay that value. But it is more likely to cost the charity money (funded out of other people's donations) in order to pay the waste disposal costs of getting rid of the contents of the bag.

I wouldn't dump a bag of carp in a charity shop doorway and then claim that I've done them a favour. And for me that is no different to using a charity to process a £1 DD in order to make a personal financial gain.

eskbanker

EachPenny wrote: »

I wouldn't dump a bag of carp in a charity shop doorway

It would stink the place out for a start, take it to the fishmonger instead....

epm-84

EachPenny wrote: »

We don't know, it is all guesswork. So there is no need, and no point, in taking that risk.

It's not 'all guesswork.' In fact on the small print of the Cancer Research website they say they cost of processing a one off payment is 7p. So if you're a tax payer and donate £1 using Gift Aid, they'll get £1.25 and then they'll incur a 7p cost in processing that payment so they'll get £1.18 to put to useful causes - more than you donated!

A better analogy would be leaving a binbag in the charity shop's doorway full of chipped mismatched plates, broken toys, jigsaws with bits missing, soiled bedding, and shoes with one of the pair missing.

Err no. I don't know about charity shops in your town but the ones in my town specifically ask you not to dump bags of donations on their doorsteps (they must be handed to a volunteer in person) and they request you only donate good quality items. So dumping a bag of duff items on the doorstep would be ignoring their requests. Unless a charity specifies the minimum level of direct debit donation is more than £1, then setting up a £1 direct debit is not ignoring their request.

epm-84

takman wrote: »

The flaw in that logic is that in a shop once the fixed costs of running the shop have been paid the charity won't incurr extra charges for each items they are donated. But when the charity accept payments by direct debit they have to pay a fee to their bank for every payment they receive and not just a fee to set it up.

Actually it could. If they get a higher than expected level of donations, they might have to get more people to sort out the donations, they might need to put some items in to storage until they sell some or they might have to transport some donations to another shop which isn't doing as well.

EachPenny

epm-84 wrote: »

It's not 'all guesswork.' In fact on the small print of the Cancer Research website they say they cost of processing a one off payment is 7p. So if you're a tax payer and donate £1 using Gift Aid, they'll get £1.25 and then they'll incur a 7p cost in processing that payment so they'll get £1.18 to put to useful causes - more than you donated!

Can you provide a link to where it says the total cost of handling a regular £1 DD works out that cheap? I saw the figure of 7p quoted in relation to one-off SMS donations, but obviously these are not the same thing.

Cancer Research is also a very large charity for which the costs of individual transactions may look very different to those of other charities who may be willing to accept £1 donations.

epm-84 wrote: »

Err no. I don't know about charity shops in your town but the ones in my town specifically ask you not to dump bags of donations on their doorsteps (they must be handed to a volunteer in person) and they request you only donate good quality items. So dumping a bag of duff items on the doorstep would be ignoring their requests. Unless a charity specifies the minimum level of direct debit donation is more than £1, then setting up a £1 direct debit is not ignoring their request.

But it isn't about whether it is 'ignoring their request' - the issue is about common sense and decency.

What one person regards as a "good quality item" is another persons rubbish, and there are plenty of posts on the forum about charity shops rejecting items, or accepting them and putting them straight in the bin.

It comes down to a choice:
a) Set up a £1 direct debit with a commercial organisation who will put that £1 into an account where the money is still yours to withdraw, and if you wish donate it to charity (with gift aid) so the charity could get the whole £1.25.(less any processing and admin costs, which could be effectively zero if you take it to a shop)

b) Set up a £1 donation via direct debit to a charity with unknown (despite protestations otherwise) costs which might result in a net loss to the charity.

There is currently no scenario in which (b) is a better option than (a) - other than for people who are unwilling to go to the effort to set up the account required to operate (a).

To claim an altruistic motive for option (b) - and promote it accordingly - may result in other people falsely thinking they too are doing a good thing with no possibility of a negative impact.